WLI - AIBU to assume my friend is wrong about pharmacies 'selling weight loss injections to people who don't need them.'

[Nancery]

I am not on them but know some people who have been / currently are and have done well on them. Not just for weight loss but for lots of then subsequent benefits (lower blood pressure, for example.)

A friend of mine, J, told me that she has a friend who 'took them even though she clearly didn't need them' and 'it's madness that pharmacies can just sell them without proper checks, it's just about the money and they don't care.'

I saw a photo of her friend and, indeed, she isn't overweight to the extent she'd be considered. I have said that IF she was taking what she claims (Mounjaro) it'd NOT be from a pharmacy. Not a chance!

J is insistent that her friend will have got them from a pharmacy as 'her husband would never let her inject herself with something that wasn't from a pharmacy.'

Those I know on it have had used multiple pharmacies between them, largely due to the price rise, and have had to go through multiple checks each time, and also subsequent checks to make sure they are eating properly etc. Video calls, photo's and video's, copies of previous prescriptions etc. They certainly can't just fudge details.

So, I am asking a bigger circle of people so see what the consensus is:

AIBU to have assumed some pharmacy, somewhere, will sell them

AINBU - to assume her friend got them off the "black market" (for want of a better phrase!)

Are slim people jealous because fat people are losing weight easily for the first time ever? Soon most overweight people will all be normal weight and there will be no-one left to sneer at. I think WLI are fantastic for helping people regain their health and self esteem.

Totally agree with this - I don’t see anyone obsessing over who and who isn’t paying for other types of medication that they may or may not need according to an entirely arbitrary set of criteria 🤷🏻‍♀️ nobody gives me a hard time about whether I should or shouldn’t be on HRT that I buy privately for example.

I hope she isn't still a friend! How awful to try to use you like that.

Pharmacies have had to increase their checks but I agree that some pharmacies still make it quite easy. I’m with Medicine Marketplace and they’re pretty strict. You have to do a video using their inbuilt system (rather than uploading one direct from your phone) so it’s pretty much impossible to fake. But not all pharmacies do that!

My DH has bought them from two pharmacies. He just had to upload photos of himself and the scales online. They could've been anyone's photos. No conversations with anyone. I think it was Asda and Llyods online pharmacies.

Best you ask him rather rhan speculating erroneously , as he needed to provide photo id. So no it couldn’t be anyone’s photos.

You could just get an overweight friend to get them for you 🤷‍♀️. They’re from a pharmacy then

You can’t do that either, as if you dint loose weight rhey stop prescribing.

No one is offered the drugs from a legit pharmacy for goodness sake, what do you think Asda or boots are touting it on thr streets lol

im agog at the imagination of some posters, who seem to think you just submit photos of some random fat person and yoh get the drugs, 😂

I mean you definitely can. That’s how I have a stockpile using discount codes and friend referrals.

I give a friend a referral code, they get a jab at a discount and give it to me, I also get a discount on my next one.

I have 3 5mg pens and a 2.5mg pen in my fridge right now. Since I only do a 2.5mg dose I have enough to do 35 weeks (with golden doses).

This!!! People who don’t take it are obsessed with it, either jealous they can’t lose weight or mad that fat people are no longer worse off than them.

People also seem to be unable to understand that the jab doesn’t make people lose weight, they just make it easier to stick to a diet. It isn’t even like it is a quick fix, it’s still a year or more for the very obese to get to a healthy weight, and then they’re stuck in a body with loose skin that they often still hate themselves for.

It’s as though there is this expectation that if a person allowed themselves to get fat then they should have to stay like that forever as punishment.

The jabs are paid for privately and are reducing the healthcare burden of obesity from the NHS, it’s a win win.

I could not agree more! I have heard people speak with such derision about those who are taking WLI that it's absurd.

Did you quote the wrong person , what does my post about using someone else’s photos have to do with uou stock piling with discount codes.

There is no speculation. I was with him when he ordered them, he commented himself on how easily people could just use someone else's pictures.

When was this @JLou08recently or a while ago? I know Asda has certainly improved their checking process since I first ordered with them in 2024.

I'd say roughly a year ago. It was before the price increase, he stopped ordering when the price went up.

When I reordered with Asda during the price hike I had to upload a whole lot more than when I first signed up with them. They have definitely upped their checks.

Everything has tightened up since then,

No I quoted the right person. I said you could get someone else to get them for you, you said ‘you can’t do that either’ and I confirmed that you in fact can because I have done it by getting different people to order for me.

I have used the 3 pens that other people ordered for me, whilst stockpiling my own prescription pens. It is very easy to get someone else to get the pens for you.

It’s easy to get WLI from reputable source even if not overweight.

It's quite worrying what you can and can't get from pharmacies. It bothers me a whole revolution in weight loss treatment bypasses GP involvement completely. At the same time a simple Salbutimol inhaler requires a prescription.

Of course there are dodgy pharmacies

my friend had it prescribed by a GP friend privately for ages. She didn’t qualify

There are some dodgy things going on. I went to my usual pharmacy first but the pharmacist wasn't there so I went to another which prescribed me. In the second one, the pharmacist went through a long questionnaire, weighed and measured me and took my blood pressure and asked my permission to look up my medical records. My BMI was just under 30 but I am on statins (between 27 and 30 you are eligible if you have other health issues). I had had numerous people tell me I didn't look overweight, but I weighed over 11 stone and I'm 5'2". All my fat is around my stomach which is the most dangerous kind, and I am able to hide it under baggy clothes. After I got home, someone phoned me from my usual pharmacy and asked how much I was paying the other pharmacy. When I told them, they offered to prescribe the same drug for less and with no questions asked, which I found quite shocking. I stuck to the one who had done it by the book.
I thought I knew which of my friends and family to tell that I'm on weight-loss drugs but today I told a friend and I could tell by her reaction that she really disapproved, though she didn't say as much - she just looked at me very coldly. It was a decision I entered into after long reflection and I know some people are funny about it but I don't believe I need to justify my choice to anyone.

But what is to stop me, as someone who has a genuine need for WLIs, using my actual pictures and recording my actual weight loss, from doing that with multiple online pharmacies simultaneously and selling the pens I don't need to friends who are not over weight?

Other than my own moral code, what else could stop me?

Presumably they write to your GP with the prescription details. But I don’t know this to be fact, I would just expect it